[Peace-discuss] RE: Military action in Darfur, like Kosovo

Wed Oct 4 14:48:36 CDT 2006

Awfully suspicious, how the AU troops (accepted by Sudan) are dismissed, 
and a "legal transfer to the UN" (which Sudan won't accept) is insisted 
upon.  A certain liberal racism, perhaps? ("Those poor Africans are 
ineffectual, but if we get a crack UN force in there that can push that 
'Arab' government around in defense of those poor blacks...")

Anyway, money and materiel can be gotten to the AU forces in situ far 
faster than a UN force can be introduced, on the UN's own estimate. 
That's clearly what serious save-Darfur people would be pushing for.  --CGE

Scott Edwards wrote:
> We are certainly not in disagreement on that point, Carl. Congress has 
> allocated somewhere in the hundreds of millions to AMIS, $20m in the 
> most recent mark-up. Thats a result of very hard lobbying by AI and 
> others. AI and others are calling for still more "additional support" 
> for AMIS, but between you and I, AMIS isn't bankrupt. Just ineffectual.
> 
> As far as material, thats a harder problem. What is needed is military 
> capability that would allow the AU forces to see where villages might 
> burn, and equipment to deploy there in time to stop the killing of 
> civilians; not by Sudanese forces, but by the Janjawid.
> 
> And not so the AU can kill or fight the Janjawid, but so the mere 
> presence of troops deters the looting, killing, and raping. And 
> guarantee aid delivery. Any such improvement of AMIS capability needs to 
> come through the UN, though, and not NATO or the Arab League. Because 
> this cannot be a mission dependant on the political will of NATO or AL 
> member states. This cannot be confused with AL or NATO member-state 
> interests. Thats why the legal transfer to the UN is important; though 
> not apolitical, a legally mandated UN PKO is much harder to manipulate 
> (whether the GoS, the USG, or the Darfur rebels) than a regional force.
> 
> But it has to happen, because for 2 years, AMIS has been completely 
> impotent.
> 
> best,
> scott
> 
> 
>> From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>> To: Scott Edwards <scottisimo at hotmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] RE: Military action in Darfur, like Kosovo
>> Date: Wed, 04 Oct 2006 08:02:54 -0500
>>
>> Why aren't those seriously concerned about people in Darfur calling on 
>> the "world leader [who] has tried the hardest to save the survivors in 
>> Darfur" (in Nat's ridiculous phrase about George Bush) to transfer 
>> large amounts of money and material to the African Union forces?
>>
>> Of course the Bush administration wouldn't do that, because they're 
>> much more interested in using the UN and NATO to threaten Sudan, while 
>> the Israeli lobby organizes against an "Arab" hate-object.  --CGE
>>
>>
>> Scott Edwards wrote:
>>> Yeah...David Lake made a similar appeal (along with S. Rice), 
>>> likening it to Kosovo. I was ticking off the hours till you wrote.
>>>
>>> If the international community can get a UN transfer in Darfur, then 
>>> that is what needs to happen.  There are still some diplomatic levers 
>>> that can be pulled on. Nothing has changed, other than a few more 
>>> terrible comparisons to the NATO Kosovo campaign, which was illegal.
>>>
>>> best,
>>> scott
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> From: "C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu>
>>>> To: Scott Edwards <scottisimo at hotmail.com>
>>>> CC: peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
>>>> Subject: Military action in Darfur, like Kosovo
>>>> Date: Tue, 03 Oct 2006 22:50:01 -0500
>>>>
>>>> Scott Edwards wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ...I don't think anyone who is taken seriously in Darfur advocacy is
>>>>> calling for a NATO military operation ... This situation is so
>>>>> remarkably different from Kosovo that I'm just confused as to why it
>>>>> keeps coming up on this list... If there is a similarity to a US-led
>>>>> bombing campaign in Southern Europe, I fail to see it...
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately that's not the view of some of the most avid 
>>>> supporters of
>>>> "aid for Darfur" (via military action against Khartoum).  In tonight's
>>>> News-Gazette, Nat Hentoff -- who's been active in this matter for
>>>> sometime -- calls for (as the headline has it) "Targeted airstrikes 
>>>> needed to send message on Sudan."
>>>>
>>>> The centerpiece of Nat's argument is Darfur's similarity to Kosovo!
>>>> That's established for him by a Clinton official, Susan Rice.  Needless
>>>> to say, both think Clinton/NATO's attack on Serbia a splendid idea,
>>>> which should be repeated in Sudan.
>>>>
>>>> (BTW, I consider Nat a friend and a courageous champion of civil
>>>> liberties for many years.  But his foreign policy views have become
>>>> increasingly Rightist in recent years -- a sad mistake, I think.) --CGE
>>>>
>>>> ===
>>>>
>>>>     News-Gazette October 3, 2006
>>>>     Nat Hentoff
>>>>     Targeted airstrikes needed to send message on Sudan
>>>>
>>>>     At the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 19, Secretary-General Kofi
>>>> Annan described "men, women and children in Darfur, driven from their
>>>> homes by murder, rape and burning of their villages ... making a 
>>>> mockery
>>>> of our claim, as an international community, to shield people from the
>>>> worst abuses ... Not having done enough for the people of Rwanda." He
>>>> continued, "can we just watch as this tragedy deepens?"
>>>>     If we wait for the United Nations to act, the answer is "yes."
>>>>     In August, the U.N. Security Council supported the sending of 
>>>> 22,500
>>>> U.N. forces into Darfur to strengthen the small African Union presence.
>>>> But Sudan's president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, threatens to attack those
>>>> peacekeepers if they come in -- adding that rising world protests
>>>> against his government are part of a Zionist plot to redraw the region
>>>> in order to protect Israel.
>>>>     The primary obstacle to any meaningful intervention by the United
>>>> Nations is that, as Mr. Annan has stated, permission must come from Mr.
>>>> al-Bashir for U.N. forces to enter because the United Nations is
>>>> composed of sovereign nations, and the sovereignty of each must be
>>>> respected.
>>>>     In a stinging response, Susan Rice, former assistant secretary of
>>>> state for African Affairs, told National Public radio on Sept. 15: "It
>>>> is like giving Milosevic or Hitler a veto over the world stopping the
>>>> perpetration of genocide."
>>>>     I vividly remember Ms. Rice while she was in the Clinton State
>>>> Department -- wishing to prod the White House to act more vigorously on
>>>> slavery in Sudan's south -- traveling to Sudan by herself to awaken
>>>> world interest then. Now a senior fellow at the Brookings 
>>>> Institution in
>>>> Washington, she is speaking the horrifying truth to the world if 
>>>> nothing
>>>> more happens than more talk at the United Nations and more anguished
>>>> editorials in the press. Just wringing our hands, she points out, 
>>>> "is an
>>>> opportunity for the people who have perpetrated genocide, the 
>>>> government
>>>> of Sudan, to clear out all the witnesses and ... continue a second wave
>>>> of the genocide, with the international community poised to stand by 
>>>> and
>>>> watch."
>>>>     Ms. Rice has an alternative: "If we, the United States, decided --
>>>> as we did in the case of Kosovo -- that we're going to act, then action
>>>> would happen." We must say to the government of Sudan that "there will
>>>> be military consequences ... unless and until you relent and allow the
>>>> United Nations force to come in and protect civilians."
>>>>     But in view of the civil war in Iraq, the resurgence of the Taliban
>>>> in Afghanistan and our other pressing obligations, is it conceivable
>>>> Congress would send American troops into Darfur?
>>>>     What we can do, Susan Rice says, acting with NATO or a coalition of
>>>> democratic nations -- there can be "targeted air strikes at Sudanese
>>>> airfields to knock out its airplanes, which have been very much 
>>>> involved
>>>> in killing civilians."
>>>>     "The threat of the actual action," she continues, "might be
>>>> sufficient to persuade the Sudanese to accept a U.N. force. That can
>>>> happen from the air" and could lead to "the U.N. forces on the ground."
>>>>     It's vital to remember that the United States has bypassed an
>>>> impotent U.N. Security Council before when essential. Says the 
>>>> admirably
>>>> clearheaded Ms. Rice: "We did act ... when we faced a similar, albeit
>>>> not even as grave a situation in Kosovo. We acted without the Security
>>>> Council, even though it would have been our strong preference to act
>>>> with the Security Council.
>>>>     "We acted with NATO to save lives in Kosovo. We didn't accept
>>>> Milosevic vetoing international action. We used a language Milosevic
>>>> understood, which was air force strikes. We never put a single NATO
>>>> soldier on the ground, but Milosevic got the message and a U.N. force
>>>> went in."
>>>>     If we do not now act to save the survivors in Darfur, one of them,
>>>> in Tawila -- Shiek Abdullah Muhammad Ali -- told Lydia Polgreen, the
>>>> invaluable New York Times reporter on the ground: "What happened in
>>>> Rwanda, it will happen here ... we beg the international community,
>>>> somebody, come and save us. We have no means to protect ourselves. The
>>>> only thing we can do is run and hide in the mountains and caves. We 
>>>> will
>>>> all die."
>>>>     In Rwanda itself, a survivor of the genocide there, Freddy
>>>> Umutanguha, told Reuters: "We survivors stand with the victims in
>>>> Darfur. We know what it is like to lose our mothers, fathers, brothers,
>>>> sisters, sons and daughters. We know what it is like to lose everything
>>>> and see all who are dearest to us destroyed."
>>>>     Of all world leaders, President Bush has tried the hardest to save
>>>> the survivors in Darfur. He named this crime against humanity being
>>>> perpetrated by the government of Sudan for what it is -- "genocide" --
>>>> while other leaders used the euphemism "ethnic cleansing."
>>>>     Will the president, with all the problems he is dealing with
>>>> elsewhere, lead further, hopefully with other democratic nations -- as
>>>> we did in Kosovo -- with targeted air strikes on Sudanese airfields to
>>>> ground the killing Sudanese airplanes, and show Mr. al-Bashir he faces
>>>> consequences?
>>>
>>>
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